The UK’s environment minister Joan Ruddock has called on supermarkets to stop offering consumers buy-one-get-one-free promotions.

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Echoing the suggestion made last week by prime minister Gordon Brown, Ruddock has argued that such promotions encourage food waste, increase household garbage and cause additional packaging to be sent to landfill.


Instead, Ruddock told UK daily The Mirror, supermarkets would provide better value for money if they had half-price offers.


“The best way to save money is to save waste,” she said. “My personal opinion is that if you really want to offer people value for money you should sell your product at half price.”


However Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, defended its use of BOGOF promotions and highlighted the initiatives it has undertaken to reduce packaging waste.

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“We need to help consumers waste less but strongly believe that the answer is not to penalise them in their pockets by ending the great deals we offer. In fact we know that large families, the elderly and students rely on these deals to make ends meet and are very canny when it comes to buying them. They often share the “buy one get one free” and multibuy products so that they get the value but avoid the waste. Others freeze products to use later,” a spokesperson for the group told just-food.


“Supermarkets have also done a huge amount to ensure that food is better protected from farm to fork which means the amount of food wasted in the supply chain in the UK is dramatically lower than most countries. We are part of the solution not the problem,” the company added.